Accumulated Fighting Majors

At last night’s Stars game I had a question asked that I couldn’t answer about the new penalties for accumulated fighting majors. I had read the Junior A Supplement when I first came to the Battlefords but for the life of me could not remember what it said. So I looked it up and found the important section.

From the Junior A Supplement:

7.8 Accumulated Fighting Majors – Above and beyond the preceding fighting regulations, all fighting majors shall tracked and accumulated and shall result in the following suspensions based on accumulated totals:

• Upon receipt of 6th fighting major ‐ 1 game suspension and $500 team fine • Upon receipt of 7th fighting major ‐ 2 game suspension and $750 team fine • Upon receipt of 8th fighting major ‐ 4 game suspension and $1,000 team fine • Upon receipt of 9th fighting major ‐ 8 game suspension and $1,250 team fine • Any subsequent fighting major shall result in a complete review by the league to determine an appropriate suspension and team fine.

Note: The accumulations and consequences are in force for the entire season and playoffs.

That last part is important. The accumulations and consequences are in force in the playoffs. That means guys will need to be careful not to put themselves in a position where if they end up in a fight, as we saw last night with Ryne Keller you don’t always have to throw a punch to get a fighting major, they will get suspended. The fines are a big aspect of this as well. Team’s in Junior A hockey operate in a lot of cases on a fairly tight budget. Those fines can get pretty hefty.

So here is a list of players on the North Stars roster who have had fighting majors.

As I went through the game sheets counting these fighting majors it struck me how many of them were players stepping in to protect a team mate. That’s another aspect of this rule. Someone like Sparrow or Newton is always going to be willing to step up and fight if they feel someone has taken liberties with one of their team mates. If they want to do that later in the season they will need to make sure they won’t get suspended because of it.

****Update*****

La Ronge Ice Wolves play by play guy Daniel Fink tells me that last year the fighting majors were reset going into the playoffs. I don’t know if that means it will happen again this year but I am going to look into it at some point in the next few days. Fink says the wording is the same this year as it was last year so it would make sense logically that they would reset fighting majors heading into the playoffs.